The Tour de France 2012 comes to a close with its final stage, as yellow-jersey holder Bradley Wiggins (Sky) will become the first British winner of the 99-year old race.
Stage 20 is a 120 km stage from Rambouillet to Paris and concludes on the famed Champs Elysees.
The first part of the stage goes across rolling hills including two Category 4 climbs on the Cote de Saint-Remy-les-Chevreuse and the Cote de Chateafort which come right before the riders enters Paris.
The peloton will then make 8 circuits of approximately 6 km each, around the Champs Elysees beginning at approximately the 48 km to go mark.
The final stage of the Tour de France is traditionally a celebratory stage for all the riders, with no GC contenders attacking each other. The final podium positions will be Wiggins, Christopher Froome (Sky), and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas).
Defending champion Cadel Evans (BMC) will finish in seventh place, after faltering in the high mountains and being unable to match the dominating time trial performances of Wiggins. Evans' teammate Tejay Van Garderen put on a superb performance by winning the white jersey for the best young rider and finishing fifth in the GC, the top American rider.
The excitement for today's stage will be all about stage victory, with a win on the Champs Elysees holding special meaning for the riders.
The Champs Elysees stage has historically been a bunch sprint, with Mark Cavendish (Sky) winning it the past three years in a row.
Sprinters like Cavendish, Andre Greipel (Lotto), Peter Sagan (Liquigas), Matthew Goss (Orica), and Tyler Farrar (Garmin) will ask their teams to chase down breakaways that will form on the circuits around the Champs Elysees.
On rare occasion, a late attack has won the stage, including one as recently at 2005, when Alexander Vinokourov (Astana) made a superb late move and held off all the sprinters to the finish.
However, the odds are in favor of a bunch sprint, with the sprint teams likely jockeying for position to build competing lead-out trains on the wide roads. Yellow-jersey holder Bradley Wiggins (Sky) may even lead out his teammate Cavendish, as he did in Cavendish's Stage 18 victory.
It should be an exciting stage, keep your browser here for live coverage of Stage 20 below.
*** Stage 20 has ended, please see a replay of our live coverage below:
